


Of Accord and Satisfaction

by luckubus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Corporate, Awkward Tension, Business, Business Trip, Co-workers to lovers, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Fiveya Week, No Incest, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn, Work, because i have no impulse control! :)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-01 21:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20417756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckubus/pseuds/luckubus
Summary: Considering that they had technically worked together for over three years, Vanya is taken embarrassingly off-guard by how handsome Five is in person; he'd looked different in pictures.At least he had a terrible personality.Probably.





	1. Accord

Five Handler. What a dumb name anyway.

Vanya would be lying if she said she wasn’t experiencing terrible nerves. The last text she’d gotten from the man had been half an hour ago and said _on my way_ with nothing else; no ETA, no nothing. Neither of them were in real danger of missing their flight just yet, but some useless, overworked part of her brain set to worry constantly was insisting on fretting over what happens if he _is_ late and whose fault it’ll be and if the hammer will come down on _her_ head because he very well could blame it—

“Miss Hargreeves?”

—well then.

He looks different than he does in pictures. Come to think of it, she’d seen him in person before — the company liked to hold occasional “events” with their star executive financial analyst headlining as a speaker — but it had always been from afar, in some folding chair with a plate of brie and crackers on her lap, imagining the overtures of Vivaldi in her head.

Here, in the bustling hell that is EWR, he sticks out like a sore thumb. Not only because of his height — tall, taller than her, maybe intimidatingly tall, but then again she’s only a modest inch over five feet — but because of his everything. His suit jacket is folded over one arm, a crisp, deep blue that’s almost black, threaded with muted pinstripes. His slacks are tailored. His shoes contrast in a warm caramel leather and look so expensive she has to fight the urge to take a step back.

And his hair is wet, and his skin is smooth, and his pressed shirt is kempt and strapped down by sleek suspenders. Even from here she can smell luxury cologne.

All of it only accentuates the kind of shrewd and handsome face that could only belong to a terrifyingly intelligent millionaire. 

And Vanya is just staring at him.

“Oh, yes,” she blurts, her entire body springing into action. The autopilot she had polished after many years in the stuffy professional environment called corporate office work came in handy as usual. There’s only a short shuffle of her things, switching between arms and bags, before she can hold her hand out appropriately and give her supervisor’s boss’s boss’s boss a polite smile. “Good to meet you. You can call me Vanya.”

“Vanya. It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

A hand much larger and warmer wraps around hers in a firm, practiced grip that she matches. There might be a flicker of surprise in his eyes — green, of course, why wouldn’t they be the rarest color — from the strength in her fingers. She gets that a lot.

But he doesn’t comment on it.

The only stop they make on the way to their gate is for coffee. He gets a large one — black.

It’s so painfully on-brand Vanya has to turn away to roll her eyes.

—

First class looks fake.

Not fake in some kind of deceptively cheap way — fake in the way that a toy store might look to a kid that grew up barely having enough to eat. Fake in the “this-can’t-be-real” kind of way. Vanya barely minds her surroundings enough to move out of the way for a passing attendant, her stare roving over every spotless inch of cream and beige and contemporary seating. She doesn’t even remember putting her bag up. Maybe someone else did it for her.

Her seat is across the aisle from Five’s. By the time she’s situated, he’s already back on his iPhone and deaf to the rest of the world as he replies to emails and god knows what else. She, however, sneaks a peek at the menu — salivates, wide-eyed at the impossible fare — and picks out all her meals in her head preemptively for their six hour flight.

It’s the most comfortable transportation she’s ever been on. Liftoff is a breeze. Her earbuds go in, and her reading material comes out.

The only interruption is the attendants, of course. When they come by for their first orders, Vanya surreptitiously listens in on Five’s exchange — he picks one of the French things she couldn’t identify — and a whiskey. That was a little surprising. But then again, it was a six hour flight.

“And you, ma’am?”

She’s ready with her order, and—

“Hey.”

—and Five is looking at her? Vanya blinks, unsure, and he’s the very image of decadence lounging in his recliner with his hair ruffled and his eyes tired and his sleeves rolled up just so to his elbows. He _is _looking at her.

“Get whatever you want, alright?”

Autopilot kicks on, and Vanya nods, smiles before she can even register his sentence. She forgets her order entirely, and has to fumble for the menu again to refresh herself. Her face feels like it’s on fire by the time she gets it all out.

“Anything else?” The attendant is perfectly patient, and Vanya is grateful for that. She’s trying very hard not to pay attention to Five, and swallows thickly.

“Yeah,” she says, “actually, I’ll take a Bailey’s and cream.”

“Bailey’s and cream. Would you like ice?”

“Uh — yes. Sure. Please.”

And she doesn’t look at Five. She picks up her copy of King Lear, and reads until a glass is placed in her drink holder.

She glances at Five. He’s got a tumbler in his hand, generous amber liquid inside, and he meets her gaze with a quietly raised glass.

“Cheers,” he mouths. Faintly, Vanya smiles back and does the same, gesturing with her heavy crystal as well.

She takes a very, very long sip. She tries not to look at Five.

Tries.

—

When they stop at a Starbucks on the way out of the terminal, she has to turn her head away _again_ so as to not laugh when he orders a second gigantic coffee, black again, no cream, no sugar. She settles on a pumpkin spice latte. Having a sense of humor is important.

Maybe it’s because they’ve landed, and maybe it’s because they finally got their late luggage, and maybe it’s because the caffeine has finally kicked in. But when they get in the back of their company-assigned chauffeur, glossy black on the outside, tinted windows and soft leather on the inside, he finally talks. Not just niceties or a brief quip — actually talks.

“So have you been to Seattle before?”

The sudden, casual question feels like it’s out of left field, but rationally, it’s quite normal. Awkward sitting so close and so far from him, alone in the backseat of a car, Vanya shakes her head no, fiddles with her smartwatch. “No, I really haven’t gotten to do much traveling. Normally it’s my supervisor going on these adventures.”

“Adventure is certainly a way to put it,” he replies wryly. “Been to a conference?”

“Just our annual one so far.”

“Then you’re in for a trip, Miss Hargreeves. These madmen know how to look powerful and professional on the outside, but come midnight you’ll see the animals they all try to hide.” Five’s face is unreadable. From one angle there’s a hint of a smile, a suggestion of mirth in his sharp eyes; from another, it’s almost a thinly-veiled warning. She can’t tell if he’s joking.

Vanya smiles hesitantly, nodding, and ventures on a nice, neutral, “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind, Mr. Handler.”

The title had been only a tiny jab at his _Miss Hargreeves_, to be honest. But she catches the way his eyes narrow, the corner of his lip twitches.

“I see they’re hiring clever ladies for editorial,” he muses. Vanya thinks the driver needs to turn the A/C up — it’s stuffy back here. “But to be fair, I just think your name is fun to say. Har-_greeves_. Doesn’t Miss Hargreeves have a ring to it? Sounds very English.”

“Yeah, it’s very English. But my mom’s side is Russian, so I got named after my grandfather.”

She doesn’t know why she’s telling him this. Five is the executive financial analyst of U.A., Inc., makes a six figure salary and then probably double or triple that in commissions and whatever else he does. She is hardly ever in contact with any soul in the company outside of their detached little editorial department — a bottom rung on the ladder, a workforce outlier. Vanya is an ant under his shoe.

In his hand, she can see his phone lighting up — emails and more emails and alerts galore — but he’s not looking at it, because he’s looking at her, and doesn’t seem to be making any moves to check his notifications.

He’s just staring at her. Thoughtfully.

“Vanya is a man’s name in Russian?” The question is sincere.

Vanya is silently perplexed as she answers. “Yeah. Yeah, um, it’s a nickname for Ivan, but then it kind of spread and became a feminine name in some places.”

“Huh. Never knew.” Pause. “Vanya Hargreeves.”

If he says her name again, it feels like something inside of her is going to burst, so she scrambles to divert the conversation away from herself, except she’s not in sales, and she’s not a conference speaker. She’s a professional email and article writer with mild social anxiety and a penchant for string instruments.

“Five Handler,” she echoes him instead, trying to sound teasing. “Handler sounds English, but where’d that infamous ‘Five’ come from?”

Regret sucker-punches her nearly the second she asks. It was literally a well-known fact that Five had a peculiar name, and that he never uttered a word about its origins. She had just impulsively asked a company executive an extremely private question—

“Handler is actually from my mother’s side.”

Five’s phone isn’t in his hand anymore; it’s sliding into his pocket, and he’s folding a leg over his knee, resting his palms on it as he faces forward, but talks at her. 

“My mother was a tight-laced bitch. She’s loosened up some, but that was after a long, miserable childhood of being her own personal puppet. So I got some dirt on her, legally emancipated myself, and changed my first name as soon as I could.”

Vanya gawks. Five reaches out to grab his coffee, and takes a drink from it, sparing her a coy glance when he sees her face.

“It was a very long time ago,” he amends, as if to reassure her.

“But...” Vanya’s brow knits. “So you kept your last name?”

Her insight earns her the first true smile on the investor's face. It’s broad, fitting across his angular jaw, and the unfamiliarity of it almost makes it unsettling in the dark privacy of their cab, but then she remembers smile is for _her_ and he is really, terribly amused.

She hasn’t managed to figure out how to turn the A/C down. She would really, really like to.

“You _are_ sharp, Miss Hargreeves,” he croons, and there _is_ something unmistakably devilish about it. “Turns out when you’re a messed up kid with a chip on his shoulder, you come up with real creative ways to get back at the people who hurt you. And sometimes that’s changing your first name, because your mother named you after herself, and keeping her last name, because you’re planning on making the world think of _you_ and not _her_ whenever they hear it.”

There’s about a dozen or so different company heads and higher-ups that she could imagine being in this car with, them telling this same story with the same spiteful pleasure; in every imagined version, she contemplates emailing HR, or feigning severe illness, or saying her random relative died and she needs to go home. Nothing in the world could keep her in proximity with someone who was probably a sociopath.

But maybe she just needs to get her head checked. Because her rational brain points out things that should probably be warning signs, and they are wholly ignored by the strange, pervasive sense of trust she feels in the pit of her chest. Something in her tells her he is telling the truth. He is only a man that was hurt because he loved a mother who did not love him right.

Vanya knows better than to judge a hit dog for snarling at a raised hand. She understands that. She was a hit dog, too.

“Honestly what’s weird is that she named you after her,” Vanya settles on after a moment. She was aiming to keep things lighthearted, not dredge up too much trauma. “Was it at least something kinda normal? Like Samuel and Samantha, Nicolas and Nicole?”

Five’s expression is comically grave as he tells her his old name.

“Okay, yeah, I like Five,” Vanya says with disgust. The face she pulls is so genuine and affronted that he actually laughs, a short, harsh bark followed by a grin. “Five is good. Great. I’m glad you went with that.”

“Thank you for your seal of approval.” He’s practically glowing. She’s somewhere between repulsed and flustered, trapped with the dark knowledge of his birth name and the contagious giddiness of his unexpected delight all at once.

She finds herself continuing to ask inappropriate questions that she probably shouldn’t. “So... so where did you get Five from? If that’s too personal—”

A waved hand quiets her. He regards her with some kind of odd, mercurial fondness; a faint smile still lingers in his eyes.

“It’s my favourite number. She’d had four miscarriages before I came along.”

—

Check-in is unforgivably long.

The conference in question — a big to-do in the FinTech world with Five billed as a top special guest speaker, of course — has brought with it a deluge of other smartly-dressed corporate big-wigs from all across the globe. Apparently all of them were in line. And staying in the same hotel.

Five immediately put himself on the phone, and Vanya had a sneaking suspicion it was to avoid the many, many pairs of eyes that had seen him and were itching to strike up conversation. She did not blame him. It had been a long day, and a long flight, and a long car ride, and the last thing she would ever want to do would be network in line at a five-star hotel.

So far, she’d had much the same reaction as she had when she’d walked in the first class cabin.

Is this how her supervisor got to live when she’d leave for event coverages? Vanya frowned, pouting inwardly. Head of Editorial wasn’t a coveted position for all the workload and insurmountable stress it came with, but the perks of travel like this... She had hardly left the east coast, let alone the country, and the nicest place she’d ever stayed was at her sister’s, which even then was only for the first time a year or so ago. She had earned the right to wallow in a little jealousy now and then.

But, Vanya reminded herself sternly, she was the one here, not her supervisor. And the company had almost not sent her; her plane ticket was secured only a few weeks shy, since nobody in any department knew how to communicate when even the tiniest hitch appeared in any plans. 

But she was here, and she had a whole extended weekend to enjoy the holy grail called known as the company credit card. She would be doing some actual journalism — deeply intimidating and anxiety-inducing as that was nevermind focus on that later — in the form of easy, fresh write-ups on any U.A. Inc. subsidiaries attending, and conference experience blog posts — alongside Mr. Handler’s highly-anticipated speech, of course. Her supervisor had also said she’d be acting as Five’s assistant as needed, though nothing truly strenuous or intensive was expected of her.

And soon, soon she would be in her own personal room, by herself, getting to indulge in luxury for the first time in her whole life! She wondered if the shower would have speakers, or wall-jets. She wondered how soft and big the bed would be—

“_Excuse me?_”

The fantasy derailed in harsh fashion; Vanya blinked, dazed as she was yanked forcefully from her blissful visions, and her attention snapped to the counter where Five was staring at the concierge like he had just handed him a dead rat.

“Mr. Handler, on behalf of the hotel I cannot apologize enough. We will—”

“You’re absolutely right you can’t apologize enough. You’re telling me in this entire five-star building you don’t have a single additional room available?”

“I’m not sure what happened — I see here that your room was booked back in May, but I don’t see anything else on file. If you’d like, I can call a manager and see what we can do—”

“So it’s one suite with one bed?”

“King-sized, yes, sir.”

“Get me your manager.”

—

There’s nothing they can do.

Five is on the phone the whole way up; Vanya keeps a straight face, pretends to admire all the elegant, rich decor that complements the hotel’s dark color palette. Some of these paintings must be worth a fortune.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is probably pissing themselves.

By the time they get to his suite, he’s hung up. The only thing she gets out of him is a terse “Accounting approved the expense but the room was never booked.” And then it’s nothing but icy silence the whole way there.

It’s past bedtime back home. Seattle is three hours behind, so it’s only seven, but the exhaustion of travel is inevitable, and both of them feel weary relief as they dump the rest of their luggage unceremoniously on the ground.

A second later, and Five is already turning on lights. From the entryway, Vanya’s jaw drops as she sees the interior. People _lived_ like this? There’s wood furnishings polished like they’re gifts from the Queen of England. The furniture itself is so lush, dense with cushions and finely-embroidered upholstery in deep shades of navy and burgundy that just _scream_ bourgeois. 

On the coffee table in what looks to be a small living room is a tray with an ornate decanter in the center. It is Five’s immediate next stop.

“Would you like any?” He asks. Vanya is quick to note he’s not snapping — in fact, he’s making a clear effort to direct his frustrations _not _at her.

But she’s still about to die from anxiety and embarrassment and shame. She shakes her head. “No, I’m good, thank you.”

He downs his portion in one swallow, and pours himself another. The glass gets one sip, then placed on a side table.

Five seems to be ruminating. His hands are in his pockets, jacket thrown over the back of an armchair, and staring into the distance of another room. He paces some. His shoes click against the flooring, and he comes back to his glass for one more sip, glancing at his phone for only a derisive second before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly.

“So.” He says. Vanya stands up straighter, hovering unsurely in the entrance still as she listens. “We don’t have a room for you. Anyone at U.A. who could possibly help has already gone home for the weekend. That being said... We have our cards, we can find you a different hotel, book you a new room, transfer you there.”

A stone sinks into Vanya’s heart, then to her stomach. Her mind is already playing through her version of it — Five, inconvenienced and stressed, tangentially related to her. It would be _very _easy to blame it on her. Even easier to throw her under the bus. She’s already tired, and she can imagine how long and miserable it will be finding herself a new hotel, contacting them, booking a new room — calling an Uber or a cab if the chauffeur is already gone. Having to ride, alone, in a city she knows next to nothing about, and then stay somewhere that almost certainly won’t be as nice as this place.

Quietly, Vanya sighs. She tamps down any urge to let her eyes prickle. She’s just stressed. She’s just nervous.

“However.”

Her head jerks up.

“Personally, I don’t feel comfortable having you stay in a different building in the middle of the city. You’re not familiar with the place, and it’ll make logistics a hassle having to sort out meeting up when and where and being at the mercy of transportation. If it’s alright with you, we can split the bed and couch — I’ll take the bed tonight since I’m speaking tomorrow and would appreciate the sleep, you can have it tomorrow night in exchange. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the best I can come up with. I understand if you’d like to find your own place instead.”

The stone vanishes, and is replaced by glorious, breathless relief.

Vanya's beaming is small and grateful. She’s twisting her watch around her wrist, over and over, and probably doesn’t look much like a working professional at all.

“You’re much too kind, Mr. Handler. That would be great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i know i'm late but i have a good excuse and it's that I'm Absolutely Fucking Insane and love breaking my own rules, like "hey lucky don't ever write anything multichaptered because you'll never finish it". except i'm holding myself to this one LOL WISH ME LUCK!!!!!! today's bonus thanks goes to @[lofticries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lofticries/pseuds/lofticries) for helping me with the financial corporate lingo and details, i love u, you are a lifesaver, i hope your next orgasm rocks ur socks off XD!111!!
> 
> prompt: _no powers_


	2. Satisfaction

He’s possessed. There’s no other explanation for it.

Five isn’t even exactly sure how things came to this juncture; less than twenty-four hours ago he was cussing at his phone after missing his alarm and seeing two texts from the poor lackey they had forced to go with him. Part of him, mild as it was, looked forward to the change of pace; the head of editorial was a mother of three and often far too cheerful for his disposition of repressed surliness. Part of him, admittedly, also looked forward to watching the junior editor attempt to navigate the artificial nightmare that these conferences seemed to breed like rats. He could only begin to imagine some young, bushy-tailed college grad smiling and shaking hands in the most amateur attempt at networking; not a soul in that room would give a damn.

That was less than a day ago. Now he’s standing in the master bathroom of thei— his suite, staring at himself in the mirror as the faucet runs on full blast, steaming the room even more.

He doesn’t understand. He can’t understand where this all went so awry.

He craves caffeine, but it’s too late for coffee, unfortunately; not that he ever considered any time too late for coffee, but he did have to make it to bed some time tonight in order to be above-average functional at the podium tomorrow. He’d given talks on just-barely-passing functional levels, and after thoughtlessly shooting down the CFO of a private aeronautics company after four hours of sleep and piss-poor room service, he didn’t itch for a repeat performance.

So he’s standing in the bathroom, water dripping off his face, trying to get a damn grip. Outside the bathroom door, see, was Vanya Hargreeves. He had never heard of Vanya Hargreeves in his entire life. That made sense — she was a junior editor. Their spheres never even so much as brushed against each other, minus the occasional exception of her supervisor. But she was there, in his room, waiting for him, and probably wearing a dress — because he said he was going to wash up for a moment, and she said she’d do the same, and put something nicer on as well. 

Because he is possessed and has no self-control.

Scarcely an hour ago — he can see it all in mortifying clarity — they had been sitting around, unpacking anything that needed to be hung up and put away. He showed her all the little tricks about the room, reaffirmed twice that yes, the drinks were complementary, and no, she would set off a fire alarm by opening the doors to the balcony, and he found himself reveling in how... how _endearing_ it was, observing her simultaneously trying to find her footing with repressed fascination while maintaining some sort of maturity in a facade.

It didn’t work. She’d see some decorative plant, some exotic bottle of water, look at him as if he would tell her it was all some sort of long-con prank, and then immediately school her face back into ambivalent disinterest.

And it didn’t get _old_. That was the part that had baffled him so rigorously: how could someone so decidedly plain and poor be so fucking _interesting_?

Five was a fool to pretend uncovering the answers to his own frivolous self-examination was his only motivation for his actions.

Dinner. He had convinced himself that dinner was a perfectly safe, professional activity between two co-workers.

It took an hour of shifty glances, innocuous pacing, and condescending self-talk. He tried with every fiber of his being, uncommonly flustered, to pull off acting natural. Five took out his phone, scrolled down his newsfeed without reading a damn thing, and leaned against a wall; casually, he cleared his throat and prompted, “Are you hungry, by any chance? I was thinking about dinner.”

Why did he clear his throat. This wasn’t a fucking movie. Everything ticked by slowly and agonizingly. She might not be hungry. She might find this _extremely _inappropriate, and with just cause. She m—

“Oh yes, yes please. Do you have anywhere in mind?”

His heart hammers into mach speed and his veins fill with ice in concert. _You utter fucking shitheel, you spent all that time planning and didn’t pick a RESTAURANT?_

“Yeah, I’m just going to check the address again.” He buys himself time to rapidly open Maps and type in _fine dining_ as fast as he can without looking frantic. The screen shows seafood, sushi, and then a wave of victory and relief hits at the sight of an upscale Italian sit-down he can recall positively from a few years prior. “Five minutes by car. You alright with Italian?”

Vanya is trying and failing not to look too excited. “More than alright. I’d go for just about anything right now.”

He doesn’t consider any other stretch of uncouth meaning his loutish mind could possibly concoct out of her words.

—

One of the staff recognizes him. They are given a private table in the back. Five is grateful that nobody but the waiter and Vanya will ever bear witness to the way he stares at her.

Years upon years of meticulous bullshitting and conniving had made Five very, very good at controlling his face. Walking out of the bathroom and seeing Vanya Hargreeves, a debatably mousy thing with no background in finances and an apparent interest in Shakespeare, her hair tucked neatly behind her ears and miles of skin revealed by a demure dress in an attractive, deep shade of olive, almost defeats him.

“Nice dress.” It’s a miracle his voice doesn’t crack.

“Thank you,” she smiles, cheekily. Jesus. “Yours too.”

Christ.

Walking to the car affords him a few precious minutes to mull over her appearance further, because maybe that’s what’s really undoing him. Maybe she’s just secretly hot in some way he’s missed, somehow. But there’s not even any cleavage. It goes up to her neck and barely covers her shoulders. The shape is flattering, cinched gently in the center by a thin belt, but is by no means form-fitting. The hem ends just above her knees.

Five has the decency to feel creepy, and pretends that opening every door for her and pulling out her chair is some way to privately make amends.

And then they sit down and Vanya can’t read a single thing on the menu because it’s in fucking Italian and he tries and fails not to succumb to every emotion all over again.

“Okay, hear me out. How about this,” she says in the middle of his explanation on _passata_. “I’m not allergic to anything, and I’m honestly starving, so why don’t you just pick something out for me and surprise me? I trust your taste. Mostly, I think.”

He wants to ask why it was only _mostly_, but he’s distracted by the fact that he didn’t know choosing a woman’s cuisine on her behalf was a fetish. The chill that goes down the length of Five’s entire body informs him otherwise.

In the end, he selects a pricey goat dish, a few smaller plates of fare to share, and a bottle of wine to pair with her entree. She asks, nervously, how expensive a bottle here is. He asks if she’s ever been to Europe. It works.

“I went to Niagara Falls one time,” she shrugs, smoothing out her napkin onto her lap and forgetting to fight him on fiscal responsibility. “That count?”

He grabs his own napkin and answers, evenly, “I don’t think Canada would be very happy to hear that.”

The waiter returns. Five has never taken so much pleasure and care in pouring a glass of wine for a woman.

The restaurant boasts dim, romantic lighting — chandeliers and candles diffusing warm, deep shades of firelight across the interior of the room. Vanya looks like a painting in this light; her eyes are dark but glint as she watches, raptly, the rich burgundy that spills into her glass. It’s a light, medium-bodied red worth maybe a week or two of her pay.

He fills his own, and just like on the plane — mere hours ago, hours ago when he couldn’t get a read on her, couldn’t figure out what made her tick and if he really even cared enough to find out — he gestures with his glass, though this time does speak.

“_Tua salut_, Miss Hargreeves.”

—

They talk for over two hours.

Five doesn’t understand how time has gotten so far away from him. Their plates are clean, more or less, and the bottle is much lighter than it had been when it arrived on the table. But his jacket is over the back of the chair, and her elbows are on the table, and now they’re talking about _quantum _fucking _physics_.

Since the moment he was supposed to meet her, come to think of it, time had been outrunning him. From the missed alarm to the poorly-timed hotel reservations to their extended dinner conversation. Fuck, he still needed to do his last-minute prep before he woke up at the crack of dawn.

“If there wasn’t any danger in time travel, would you go through with it, I mean? Like, would you pop back in time, maybe grab a few lottery tickets, bet on a few horses, start life fresh?”

And none of that matters.

“I don’t need time travel to make money, Hargreeves,” he finds himself leaning forward in his chair, the ghost of a crooked smile permanently across his lips. Even in the candlelight, he can tell she’s flushed from the wine, though neither of them are any more than comfortably tingly and warm.

Vanya rolls her eyes. “Okay, well that makes one of us. What, would you just scoot off to the future, then? Or does the law of thermodynamics mess that up too?” She pauses, and suddenly squints at him like he’s hiding a secret — his chest is strangely tight — and then she leans back, giggling. “What a _weird _time to get déjà vu. Maybe your alternate universe copy is trying to say something to me.”

_Yeah, that he wants to drape you over the table_, Five thinks to himself flatly. He sits back, too.

The waiter returns before he can humor her with a morally sound response. Five checks his watch, and represses a deep sigh; the restaurant needed to close, and they’re holding it up. 

Maybe the answer is that he would go back and tell himself to ask for a junior editor instead of sucking it up and tolerating the head one.

“What time do you have to get up?” She asks him in the car after they’ve paid and regrettably left. Five already misses the little bubble they had been in, oblivious to the rest of the universe.

“Around six. Gives me enough time to get in a work out and shower while interacting with minimal people.”

“You’ve sure got the personality of a public speaker.” Vanya’s head is leaned against the seat, sleepy, eyes barely staying open. The fatigue is contagious; Five almost instantly feels the heaviness in his own bones. When his eyes close, half-smiling at her jab, he can’t help but agree.

“Everyone has a public face and a private face,” he counters.

“That so.” He peeps open one eye to catch her stifling a yawn. Her hair is kinda messy from the interior, and well. Well, it looked good. “So was this your public face or your private face?”

The question catches him off-guard, and with a pang, he realizes that there’s some sincerity in it. She couldn’t actually tell that this wasn’t his public face, would never be in a thousand years. There’s the roiling sensation of his heart plummeting into his stomach, and he frowns at it.

“Can’t tell?” He hedges instead of answering directly. 

Vanya frowns, too. “I’ve never had to have a... public face, or however you put it. And it’s not like I have anything to compare you to, I don’t have a baseline or anything. We only met this morning— Jesus, it was really only this morning, wasn’t it? It feels like we’ve been talking forever.”

Perhaps he had drank more than he thought; the maelstrom of emotions that blast through him leave him off-balance, even sitting down. It _had _only been this morning. But it _did _feel much like forever.

“Time flies,” he murmurs, absently. Mostly to himself. But he hears Vanya hum in soft agreement over the sound of the engine and blurry streets.

—

Sleeping had never been Five’s friend, and he had no clue nor intention on how to make nice with it.

He sleeps lightly, first and foremost. A strict upbringing of bed by seven and up at five would do that to you, especially when you were being monitored by cameras and had very real consequences if you were caught up for any reason outside of bodily functions. It meant a lot of long showers.

All it takes is the vibration setting on his phone to rouse him at six on the dot.

He puts no small amount of effort into getting ready quietly. He’s already itching for coffee when he slides on his shoes, and heading to the door he allows himself one curious, indulgent glance at Vanya’s sleeping form.

She’s on the floor.

A moment of real, true concern tears through him, but it’s quickly tempered by logic. She has a pillow under her head, and a blanket over her body that rises and falls slowly with her breathing. Five gawks, coming down from his mini-heart attack. Then, he furrows his brow, pretends to hesitate, and sneaks over to her side.

“Hey,” he says, voice low. One hand nudges her shoulder. She feels cold. Of course she is, she’s on the ground. “Vanya. You alive?”

“Hmgh?”

Ah, she’s a slow waker. First her fingers twitch, and he hears that deep, tell-tale breath of lungs drinking in fresh air. The fabric all shifts at once until she rolls over, stretching as she does, and those quiet brown eyes blink in the dim light. Less wary than usual, though. More muddled, all dazed from dreaming.

_Get it together, Casanova. 6:14 in the fucking morning._

“Good morning, Hargreeves. I’m heading out, so you can go sleep in the bed. I’m not leaving you on the floor.”

Vanya blinks again. A long pause comes as he watches her brain process his words with a sluggish delay, and as she does, more and more of her usual body language comes back, too. Her shoulders pull in, forward, and her chin drops. It’s like all of her is less open. He doesn’t dwell on why that bothers him.

“You still with me?”

“Mmm.” A hand rubs feebly over her eyelashes at his prompt. “Are you sure?” Oh, and there’s her raspy sleep voice.

Five swallows, jaw ticking and then forcibly relaxing. He blithely smiles. “No, Vanya, I woke you up first thing before the sun was even up to play this funny joke on you. Yes I’m sure, please go sleep in a real bed.”

And then _she _smiles, tired and wide enough for him to know she would’ve laughed if she was more cognizant. Because he could apparently read her that well now.

He really needed to go.

Five stands abruptly and steps away, needing to regain some semblance of his senses. Because it’s hitting him, really hitting him, that everything about this situation was patently absurd. She was a woman he barely knew, mostly. He knew about her sister, and her niece, and he knew about her favourite composers, and several stories about her getting into trouble as a kid. And that her maternal grandfather was named Ivan. Most people would say that counted for a lot.

Except it had barely been a day.

_Lust_, his mind hisses helpfully. _It’s lust. It’s that simple. Maybe she’s ovulating. Or it’s pheromones._

Except he wasn’t even terribly struck by her upon meeting, though he was disinclined to agree with his initial impression — Vanya had the sort of face that became more and more fascinating the more you looked at it. Every minute change in expression happened as she talked and existed, and each shift highlighted something else new: her eyes disappearing from a huge grin. The faint freckles on her cheeks. The way her eyes move, smooth and thoughtful, always paying attention, always thinking in silence, only ever revealing a small percentage of it.

And isn’t that ridiculous? No matter his ambitions, Five is a realist, and with each morsel of time he spends with her, learns of her, the more agonizingly aware he is of the fact that he wants to sleep with her, and also wants to do more than sleep with her. It’s ridiculous.

It’s a very bad idea.

Vanya is not like the other women he has dated.

He really needs to get to the gym. 

Now.

Five doesn’t say anything else as he grabs his things. He doesn’t turn around when he hears her moving to get up. He’s determined to leave without saying another word to her.

“Have fun, ‘nd thank you,” Vanya calls sleepily from his room. “Call me if you need anything.” There’s a distant _fwump_ of her body landing in all the dense, warm bedding.

He makes it from the hall to out the door in record time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (drags hands down face) the perfectionist part of my brain wants to edit this 5483958439x longer but i'm trying to be good about just FINISHING SHIT FOR ONCE and not getting trapped in the endless maelstrom of nitpicking and never delivering >:(((!!! THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING SO SO SO KIND, I APPRECIATE YOU A LOT.
> 
> prompt: _time_


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